Comparison between SOI nMOSFET's under uniaxial and biaxial mechanical stress in analog applications

摘要

This work presents a study comparing the analog performance of uniaxially and biaxially strained planar Silicon-on-Insulator nMOSFETs for a wide range of channel lengths. The study is performed via two-dimensional numerical and process simulation and supported by experimental measurements. The comparison between devices from the same technology with these two strained techniques demonstrated that higher intrinsic voltage gain is obtained for biaxial mechanical stress. However, the transconductance is higher for uniaxial mechanical stress for shorter devices (below 550 nm) leading to larger unity gain frequency. On the other hand, despite both strain techniques degrades the output conductance, this degradation with channel length shortening is less pronounced for devices under biaxial mechanical stress.